Politics, Government & Public Policy: May 2003 Archives

I've written several times about so-called campaign finance reform, and there's another aspect that I want to address. I said before that one of the reasons that there is a problem with "special interests" unduly influencing elections is that the legislative branch of our government has usurped too much power from the states themselves, and that's a fact. It would be good to drastically cut taxes and "entitlements", but how could such a thing be accomplished under our current system?

Well, it probably can't. However, the current system isn't the only possible way to do things; until 1913 the federal legislative playing field was quite different. Before the enactment of the 17th Amendment Senators were not elected directly by the people of each state, but were instead selected by the state legislatures. John Dean wrote an essay in 2002 in which he argues that this change to our republic is really what is responsible for the federal bloat we've seen since FDR, and that such cannot be laid solely at the feet of the Progressive movement.

I think Dean has a valid point. The 17th Amendment doesn't account for the explosion of state governments, but I'm sure it at least played a role in the subversion of our federal government. Why was it enacted in the first place? John Dean bases his conclusions on the research of George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki and demolishes two traditional explanations for the 17th. He then says:

Fortuntely, Professor Zywicki offers an explanation for the Amendment's enactment that makes much more sense. He contends that the true backers of the Seventeenth Amendment were special interests, which had had great difficultly influencing the system when state legislatures controlled the Senate. (Recall that it had been set up by the Framers precisely to thwart them.) They hoped direct elections would increase their control, since they would let them appeal directly to the electorate, as well as provide their essential political fuel - money.

This explanation troubles many. However, as Zywicki observes, "[a]thought some might find this reality 'distasteful,' that does not make it any less accurate."

The permanent solution to the corruption in Washington is to split Congress back into its original form, so that state legislatures can provide a balance against the federal government's insatiable appetite for power (and vice versa). The "checks and balances" of our political system are its greatest strength; competition eliminates the long-term problems that arise when too much power is concentrated in any one institution.

Donald Sensing writes that all matters of government come down to the question of how to redistribute wealth. He's largely correct, but I don't think laws against murder fall into that category, for instance.

Donald says that even though conservatives want to cut taxes, they aren't really proposing to actually cut spending -- they just want to raise spending by smaller amounts than the Dems do. This is true. In Washington, if a budget item is expected to increase 5% but then only increases 4%, that's a "budget cut". In the real world, if I think I'm going to get a 5% raise but then only get a 4% raise... well, I still got a raise, not a pay cut. Things are different when you're spending Other People's Money, apparently.

As I wrote before in relation to campaign finance reform, the government simply has too much power and too much money. Donald talks about finding a tax point that maximizes government revenue, but I don't want to maximize government revenue. I want to cut government revenue and cut government spending. I've written before that government spending could be cut by 70% without hurting the military (one of the only essential functions of government, even though it's labeled "discretionary" in the budget) and still leave enough money to fund regulatory and law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and the (ugh) EPA.

The less money the government has the less power it has. Campaign finance "reform" wouldn't be an issue if government employees didn't have so much power which they are able to use to benefit their contributors. It's irrational to expect politicians to not use their power for their own benefit from time to time, so we really need to be careful what powers we give them. As it stands, they wield way too much of it over our daily lives and activities. The solution isn't to try to restrict the speech of the people who want to influence the politicians, the solution is to take away the power. As the saying goes, "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". If the power is reduced then the corruption will be too. Trying to eliminate corruption while leaving the power in place is foolish; it's never worked in the past, it won't work with CFR, and it will never work in the future.

It appears that Glenn Reynolds is in favor of allowing women into front line combat positions, but I wonder whether or not he believes that their presence actually degrades the performance of the military? I suspect that he thinks it does not, and yet there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that this is indeed the case. I've written on the topic before (post 1, post 2, post 3) and I believe there are very compelling reasons for us as a society to prevent women from taking part in front line combat.

The issue of violence against women was crystallized when former prisoners of war appeared before the Commission, including one of the two women captured during Operation Desert Storm. Testimony about the indecent assault on one of the women drew further attention to POW training programs already in place that "desensitize" male POWs to the brutalization of women with whom they may be held captive. An interview with trainers at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training center at Fairchild Air Force Base uncovered a logical but disturbing consequence of assigning women to combat:

"If a policy change is made, and women are allowed into combat positions, there must be a concerted effort to educate the American public on the increased likelihood that women will be raped, will come home in bodybags, and will be exploited. The consequence of not undertaking such a program would be large-scale disillusionment with the military should the United States get in a protracted military engagement."

Maybe I'm a just a male chauvinist pig, but I don't particularly want to see that type of thing. Regardless of training, male soldiers will not see the women they serve with as "just one of the guys", and will inevitably take extra precautions to try and prevent their death or capture. This may lead to circumstances where a commander does not surrender when he otherwise would, for instance, or vice versa. Women may not understand this fact or like it (and some men may argue against it for PC reasons) but it's biological and not merely cultural.

There is no need for women to fight in front-line positions, and the peripheral issues that would come into play even if the women could meet the same physical requirements as the men would do more harm than good.

In addition to being unconstitutional, the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act is also useless.

Democrats today are kicking off a roundabout way of helping to finance their 2004 congressional campaigns with the very type of unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals that many party leaders had vowed to flush from the political system.

The strategy involves creating two new groups unmistakably aligned with the Democratic Party's long-standing campaign organizations for the House and Senate. Technically, however, the two groups are not arms of the Democratic Party. That is a key distinction, because the nation's new campaign finance law bars lawmakers from soliciting "soft money," the unlimited money that politicians still crave.

The BCFRA is causing the Dems more problems than it's causing the Republicans, mainly because the Democrats generally depend on a small number of large donations while the Republicans are financed by a larger number of small donations that are made up of more "hard money". This may be counter-intuitive if you had previously thought that the Democrats are the "party of the people" and the Republicans are "owned by the rich".

Some Democrats do not feel they have time to wait. With a soft-money ban in place, Republicans raised more than three times as much as Democrats during the first three months of this year. In recent years, Democrats had much better luck raising seven-figure checks from union leaders, trial lawyers and Hollywood moguls.

In 2002, nine of the 10 biggest soft-money donors were Democrats, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.

Don't worry, the Republicans are forming these new soft-money groups as well, and in the end there will be just as much money spent on campaigns as there was before the stupid law was passed. It's all smoke and mirrors folks. Money is like water: it follows the path of least resistance to the lowest point available, and there's no one lower than politicians.

CFR is a poor attempt to solve a very serious problem. Power corrupts, and those who wield government power tend to try and use that power to maintain their position. Likewise, the governed groups attempt to coerce the government into using its power to their advantage by passing laws that benefit the group in question. One of the main ways that these groups try to manipulate those in power is by contributing money to their election campaigns. It costs a lot of money to get elected to federal office so the candidates need the support; since they'll be up for election again a few years later they also need to stay in the good graces of their contributors. It's quite a cycle, and it rightly disturbs many people.

However, groups are funded by individuals who contibute money to the cause, and it's morally wrong and bad policy for the government to have the authority to decide when its citizens may speak and what they may say. This is particularly true when it comes to the political speech that is instrumental in determining who exactly gets to wield the government's power. It's as if the management executives of a corporation tried to forbid the board of directors from sharing financial information with shareholders.

The real problem isn't the speech, the real problem is that the people who wield government power use it for selfish gain. This is human nature, and no law can prevent it or even really detect it. You may "know it when you see it" but that's a rather subjective standard. The only real solution to the problem is the reduce the amount of power that the government wields so that there is less incentive to abuse it. In an ideal world, labor unions and corporations would have no reason to contribute money to candidates because they would know that the government could neither hurt their business nor help it by passing laws. The government wouldn't have fat subsidies to hand out to farmers, or control over elderly peoples' purse-strings.

My instinct tells me that we could cut our government budget by 70% and it could still fulfill all its essential functions. In 2002, we spent around 15% of the money on defense, which we should keep. Gut all the other "discretionary" spending (code for pork), and gut the majority of the "mandatory" spending (also code for pork, plus doomed Social Security) and we could all put a lot of money back in our pockets. Additionally, the vast majority of "special interests" would disappear, because the government just wouldn't have the power to help them anymore.

Ah, the Democrats... scrambling puppies, nipping on issues that fall like scraps from Bush's dinner table. The Democratic candidates debated tonight in a taped format that I haven't had a chance to see yet (who knows when it will be broadcast), but here's a summary from WaPo. What's the only morsel they can dig their teeth into to use against Bush?

But the candidates, and moderator George Stephanopolous of ABC News, turned the focus mostly to the bread-and-butter domestic issues that Democrats hope will drive the 2004 campaign.

Of course they want so-called "bread-and-butter" issues to take center stage (WaPo got the DNC memo on which catch-phrases to use, I see) because they know they'll lose if world events are allowed to remain in the public eye.

Lieberman is the most hawkish of the Dems (and actually seems like a pretty good guy) but he could never represent the US effectively to the rest of the world. Why? Well, I hate to say it, but it's because he's Jewish. In case you haven't noticed, there's been quite a resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world, particularly in Europe. Oh right, and Arabs hate Jews almost as much as Europeans do. Frankly, there's probably enough anti-Semitism in America to keep Lieberman from winning as well, particularly among black Americans who make up a large Democratic constituency. If Lieberman were even nominated the conspiracy theorists would have a field day. Which could be quite entertaining, actually.

Most of the candidates are jokes that stopped being funny back in the '80s; the newcomers just don't have the gravitas necessary to displace Bush. In the end, it will probably be Sen. Edwards or Sen. Kerry up against the Pres, and the polls don't make it look like it will even be close. Sure, the election is 18 months away, and a lot can happen, but the economic cycle is just now starting to turn around and by next November I expect that the Dems' only issue will have dissipated into the ether.

I'm interested in education issues, largely because a good chunk of my tax dollars to towards it and I think our system is a miserable failure. Apparently, I'm not alone. Let me make a brief list of things that won't solve the education problem in our country:

Spend more money. We've tried this for the past 50 years, and hey, things keep getting worse. Between 1978 and 1999, inflation-adjusted spending on education in California increased 39%. Most of the money pays for beauracracy and overhead. In California, teachers "earn" tenure after two years and are then assured a job for life -- high school teachers and below shouldn't get tenure ever, what's the point? Of course, if Governor Davis wasn't such a special interests whore the teachers' union wouldn't have so much power.

Increase diversity. I know a lot of kids, and most of them are far less concerned with racial issues than adults are. Their biggest problem isn't that they can't get along with other races (because they generally can), it's that they have no discipline or interest in education.

Make school easier. Most high school graduates are illiterate and incapable of solving math problems; how much easier can it get? Heck, even college grads can't read (see subsequent slides for definition of terms).

The problem with public education is the first word: "public". People don't value things they perceive as being free, even when in fact it is their tax money paying for education. The whole system is a socialistic relic that should be gutted and turned over to the private sector. Let capitalism and competition (overseen by limited government regulation) turn our pathetic education system around.

I've been thinking about intellectual property again, and the fact that digital encoding can basically reduce all IP to a number (or set of numbers) makes me think that it's going to be very difficult to enforce copyright laws in the future; basically, extend the effect Napster had on music to everything. This isn't a very profound realization, but the underlying question seems important to me: how can anyone ever claim to own a number?

I was reading a little bit about how radio frequencies are licensed by companies for use but are considered to be "owned" by the public as a whole and administered by the government. If numbers can be considered to be owned by anyone, they should fall into the public domain in the same way that radio frequencies do. But then what? Government-run licensing for companies that want to monopolize certain numbers (such as the number that encodes a specific song in the MP3 format)? Would they have to pay to hold these licenses? How then would they make money, through advertising like a radio station? It just doesn't make any sense.

The end result is that I think we're nearing the end of the period in human history wherein it has been possible to "own" a representation of an idea (through copyright). Inventions and processes that depend on physical constructions will be protectable into the forseeable future (until we have replicators?), but the concept of the copyright will probably disappear by 2050 (my conservative guess). As it is, many societies are incapable of / unwilling to enforce existing copyright treaties, and the difficulties will only grow. Social momentum will eventually overwhelm the existing order, and it will collapse.